Featuring Reviews of Triangle Area Restaurants, and Food and Drink Recommendations!

Sweet Traditions Bakery in Cary

It had been a while since I’ve been to Sweet Traditions. When I walked in, I immediately noticed some of the display cases had been moved from where last I saw them, and they seemed to have less of a selection of the specialty items such as Napoleans, which I love. A sign hanging up asked us to please excuse the mess, as the store was under new management. I asked the lady behind the counter about that and she said that the baker was still the same, just the management was different.

I’ve never had the cakes here, though they certainly do look very nice. I took a picture of one of the plain, undecorated ones, as I didn’t want to trouble the lady behind the counter to bring out one of the customized ones someone had ordered. I imagine the cakes must taste pretty good though, as in the past I’ve had a mini chocolate cake from here that was incredibly delicious.

They also had some muffins on display this morning. The muffins were absolutely huge! I don’t know how much they were but I imagine you could feed yourself for an entire day off them. The topping was some kind of cream cheese topping. They looked beautiful, but again, this was not what I was after today.

What Sweet Traditions has that is better than any place else is the donuts. Big, soft, fluffy sweet donuts. They make long johns, bear claws, twists, donut holes, bismarks, cake donuts and just plain old ring donuts, all huge and fantastic.

I’ve never been disappointed with any donut I’ve had here. I just wish they would expand on the varieties sometime. My favorite has always been creme filled long johns with caramel icing, but often if they have long johns it’s just one variety. Today it was raspberry filled with sugar coating. We got this “dozen” donuts (which was really closer to 25 or so, counting all those donut holes) for only $9. Pound for pound it’s a much better deal than buying from the bakery departments at Harris Teeter or Kroger, and the quality here is so much better.

Though I love this store, the place could use a few improvements. First off, why on Earth are they closed on Sundays and Mondays? Mondays I can understand, probably the least popular day for getting up early and grabbing donuts on the way to work, but why Sunday too? You’d think they’d be missing out on one of their busiest days by skipping Sunday.

The pastries at this shop don’t live up to the high standard the donuts have set forth. The pastries tend to be rather dense, not as light and fluffy as the donuts. I would like to see them skip the turnovers and danishes, and instead expand the donut selection to include more varieties, toppings and fillings that are set out every day. Besides, knowing Guglhupf owns the Triangle area for pastries, it’s probably not even worth trying to compete with them. Just stick with the donuts and cakey-type things.

One "dozen" donuts

I think they could also pick up some more business if they moved to a more obvious location, and started serving coffee. A lot of people probably drive right past and never see it, because it’s in the inner corner of a plaza that you can’t see well from Harrison. And lots of people like to get quality coffees and espresso drinks with their breakfast pastries, and without a drive-up coffee place nearby it’d be nice to do an all-in-one sort of place.